A recent paper outlined the trends, opportunities, and challenges toward development of diagnostic devices to help prosthetic care providers better assess and maintain prostheses users’ residual limb health. “The well-being and mobility of individuals living with limb loss are primarily affected by their overall and residuum health,” the authors wrote.
The researchers collected information about technologies suitable for integration into next-generation diagnostic devices from 41 references while considering the invasiveness, comprehensiveness, and practicality of each technology subjectively. They found opportunities to develop wireless, wearable, and noninvasive diagnostic devices that integrate wireless biosensors to measure changes in the residual limb during real-life conditions as well as computational modeling.
Developing the next-generation diagnostic devices, however, will require overcoming critical barriers associated with the design (e.g., gaps between technology readiness levels of essential parts), clinical roll-out (e.g., identification of primary users), and commercialization (e.g., limited interest from investors).
The authors concluded that they anticipate that next-generation diagnostic devices will contribute to prosthetic care innovations that will safely increase mobility, thereby improving the quality of life of the growing global population of individuals suffering from limb loss.
The open-access paper, “Next-generation devices to diagnose residuum health of individuals suffering from limb loss: A narrative review of trends, opportunities, and challenges,” was published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport.
